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Jonathan Ingram, Jerry Fairbanks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

POEMS OF COLERIDGE

SELECTED AND ARRANGED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY
ARTHUR SYMONS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

CHRISTABEL

KUBLA KHAN

LEWTI

THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE

LOVE

THE THREE GRAVES

DEJECTION: AN ODE

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY

FRANCE: AN ODE

FEARS IN SOLITUDE

THIS LIME TREE BOWER MY PRISON

TO A GENTLEMAN (W. WORDSWORTH)

HYMN BEFORE SUN RISE

FROST AT MIDNIGHT

THE NIGHTINGALE

THE EOLIAN HARP

THE PICTURE

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO

THE TWO FOUNTS

A DAY DREAM

SONNET

LINES TO W. LINLEY, ESQ.

DOMESTIC PEACE

SONG FROM ZAPOLYA

HUNTING SONG FROM ZAPOLYA

WESTPHALIAN SONG

YOUTH AND AGE

WORK WITHOUT HOPE

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY

LOVE'S APPARITION

LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE

DUTY SURVIVING SELF LOVE

LOVE'S FIRST HOPE

PHANTOM

TO NATURE

FANCY IN NUBIBUS

CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT

PHANTOM OR FACT?

LINES SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS

FORBEARANCE

SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM

ON DONNE'S POETRY

ON A BAD SINGER

NE PLUS ULTRA

HUMAN LIFE

THE BUTTERFLY

THE PANG MORE SHARP THAN ALL

THE VISIONARY HOPE

THE PAINS OF SLEEP

LOVE'S BURIAL PLACE

LOVE, A SWORD

THE KISS

NOT AT HOME

NAMES (FROM LESSING)

To LESBIA (FROM CATULLUS)

THE DEATH OF THE STARLING (FROM CATULLUS)

ON A CATARACT (FROM STOLBERG)

HYMN TO THE EARTH (FROM STOLBERG)

THE VISIT OF THE GODS (FROM SCHILLER)

TRANSLATION (FROM OTTFRIED)

THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE HYMN

EPITAPHS ON AN INFANT

AN ODE TO THE RAIN

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION

SOMETHING CHILDISH, BUT VERY NATURAL

LINES ON A CHILD

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB

FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER

THE TWO ROUND SPACES ON THE TOMBSTONE

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS

COLOGNE

SONNETS ATTEMPTED IN THE MANNER OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

LIMBO

METRICAL FEET

THE HOMERIC HEXAMETER (FROM SCHILLER)

THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE (FROM SCHILLER)

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES (FROM MATTHISON)

To

EPITAPH ON A BAD MAN

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT

THE GOOD, GREAT MAN

INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN ON A HEATH

INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME PIECE

A TOMBLESS EPITAPH

EPITAPH

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

In one of Rossetti's invaluable notes on poetry, he tells us that to him
"the leading point about Coleridge's work is its human love." We may
remember Coleridge's own words:

"To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed."

Yet love, though it is the word which he uses of himself, is not really
what he himself meant when using it, but rather an affectionate sympathy,
in which there seems to have been little element of passion. Writing to his
wife, during that first absence in Germany, whose solitude tried him so
much, he laments that there is "no one to love." "Love is the vital air of
my genius," he tells her, and adds: "I am deeply convinced that if I were
to remain a few years among objects for whom I had no affection, I should
wholly lose the powers of intellect."

With this incessant, passionless sensibility, it was not unnatural that his
thirst for friendship was stronger than his need of love; that to him
friendship was hardly distinguishable from love. Throughout all his letters
there is a series of causeless explosions of emotion, which it is hardly
possible to take seriously, but which, far from being insincere, is really,
no doubt, the dribbling overflow of choked up feelings, a sort of moral
leakage. It might be said of Coleridge, in the phrase which he used of
Nelson, that he was "heart starved." Tied for life to a woman with whom he
had not one essential sympathy, the whole of his nature was put out of
focus; and perhaps nothing but "the joy of grief," and the terrible and
fettering power of luxuriating over his own sorrows, and tracing them to
first principles, outside himself or in the depths of his sub
consciousness, gave him the courage to support that long, everpresent
divorce.

Both for his good and evil, he had never been able to endure emotion
without either diluting or intensifying it with thought, and with always
self conscious thought... Continue reading book >>